


Polish to a Gleam

by HerenorThereNearnorFar



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Abuse of Authority and Rampant Government Repression in the Background, Death, Gen, Leaning into the Disability Narrative for the Burnish, Lio Backstory, Motorcycles, Not-So-Spoiled Rich Boy Realizes the World Is Hard For Burnish, Resolves to Do Something About It, Terrible Parenting of A Magical Minor, Warning for Sitcom References, old clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2020-12-28 03:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21130013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerenorThereNearnorFar/pseuds/HerenorThereNearnorFar
Summary: Lio learns what Burnish means.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I have other projects I'm supposed to be working on but when I see a little angry person I simply must have them. A friend said the movie was pretty and now I'm 9000 words in. It's free real estate to do traumatizing backstory in!

The first thing he remembers is the rage filling him up, demanding to be heard. The second thing he remembers is the flames. 

They go together, the burning anger and the flat out _ burning _. When he screams the green and pink fires rage higher, burn harder, twist and turn violent forms and strange furious creatures. The louder the clamor inside of him becomes, the hotter and brighter the flames. 

Most of his early years are spent in a little ceramic brick shed in the garden. Fireproof, his grandfather says, knocking the rough walls approvingly. The softer trappings of childhood— his toys and clothes— burn regularly in his rages (he’s not old enough yet to fully control the cold flames, which smother but don’t consume) but the walls stay solid. They keep Lio locked away. 

When he tires himself out screaming, Yaya and Papa and the fearful servants return, cautious and slow, moving like he’s a venomous snake and not a little boy. The maids sweep up the ashes of his tantrum. Papa tuts and brings out new clothes, new toys, new copies of the family pictures to pin carefully to the bare brick walls. Yaya lays a hand on Lio’s knee and gives him a talking to. 

“You are our grandson, the last of the Fotia family,” she scolds, turning Lio’s head towards the black and white images on the walls, proud ancestors in neat rows. “You are our daughter’s only child. You will not be some Burnish savage. We did not save you and protect you for you to become so hopeless. Control yourself.”

Then, for a while, peace is restored. Lio is exhausted enough to eat and play quietly and listen patiently to stories of his past. 

“The Burnish Management Forces had to dunk you up to the neck in cooling gel to get you out of the hospital, and you still wouldn’t stop screaming,” Papa tells him for the hundredth time. “2 days old and dangerous enough to warrant a full city wide response.”

He burnt the hospital he was born in to the ground. There were half a dozen deaths. He’s not old enough to be guilty about that yet but it will come in time. 

“If we weren’t already there to take custody,” Yaya cuts in dangerously, “You would be in a lab somewhere, or pawned off to Odd Burnish or another one of those terrorist groups.”

Even at 4, something about that rings false, but Lio still nods, pretending to be thankful for the power of rich grandparents. 

He doesn’t ask about his mother. He’s long ago privately decided that she must be dead. Talking to Yaya and Papa about her always turns sad. She is their greatest regret, their wayward child, lost to the wilds of downtown Detroit and the chaos that followed the Great World Blaze. 

The drugs in her system gave Lio the early start at boundless fury that probably brought the Burnish mutation down on him, but he doesn’t blame her for that. At times he’s thankful. It would be awfully quiet in this little shed without the pulsing fires in his heart. 

“Can I go outside?” he asks timidly, putting on his very best boy face, the one that makes even the most frightened servants melt a little beneath their fireproof clothing. 

Yaya and Papa exchange glances. 

“For a while.”

The gardens are wide and pretty, and there are no neighbors for miles which is good because if anyone knew about Lio they would take him away. Neither the Burnish nor the local human governments approve of unsupervised Burnish children left alone. And Yaya and Papa can’t bear to lose him— he’s all they have left. The World Blaze took their children away one by one and now all that remains is spiteful Lio. _ Lio _, who cannot even be trusted inside the house, who had to be swaddled in aramid and fiberglass as a baby, whose nursemaids wore firefighting gear and were sworn to secrecy. 

Lio plays for a while amid the neat hedges, pretending he’s a soldier like one of the blurry ancestors who line his walls. Their dark uniforms with rows of buttons and swooshy shoulders seem very glamorous, full of solemn pomp, and it’s fun to pretend to be a commander of daisies and neatly trimmed grass. 

Nice as the flowers are, they’d be_ much _ nicer if they were on fire, Lio muses. The pounding in his chest agrees. They aren’t quite voices, not in the way people imply when they shout, “Why are you doing this! Is something making you?” They’re… presences. Like the hum of fires deep underground or the far off sparkle of other similar souls he sometimes senses on quiet nights. They don’t order or prevail, they just make their wishes known, and all they want is to burn and burn some more. 

Luckily Lio likes burning too. It might get him in trouble, might get him locked away and scolded, but it fills him up with a wild sense of belonging, of completeness. There is no replacement for the satisfaction of seeing the fires begin to crackle. 

Yaya and Papa are looking away so he summons a fistful of sparkling light and drops a handful of grass blades into the conflagration. The fire brightens, as if it’s happy to have something to burn, and Lio giggles to himself and starts feeding more grass into the growing flame. It’s halfway up his arm when a servant in dense flame retardant gear snatches him up and holds him fast while another douses him in pink foam. The fire splutters but doesn’t die— Lio learned how to burn through the dense protein fire suppressant months ago. The frightened servant starts heaving him back to his room. When all else fails, fire bricks can contain their burning charge. 

Lio, realizing that the garden is being taken away from him, screams. With the rising anger comes more fire, enough to envelop him and his captor. 

From a safe distance, Papa frowns reprovingly. “Lio.”

Lio is past the point of sensibility. He wants to play, he wants to incinerate, he wants to be free to run free with the humming friends in the backseat of his soul. 

“I wish the Burnish had taken me!” he manages through tears as he’s tossed back onto his bed of kevlar-over-glass-wool. “I wish I wasn’t here!”

The door swings shut heavily, weight making it slow to move. Lio lashes out one last time at the shining world outside. The sturdy fire-made-materia slams into the ceramic as it thuds closed. 

For a few moments he indulges in pure anger. The room fills with heat too intense for any human to bear, scorching his meagre replacement belongings and slowly charring the paper pictures on the walls. Minor European nobles, proud aluminum and steel magnates, and forward thinking solar traders all crumble to ashes, revealing the bare brick walls of his prison. 

Perhaps because of his tantrum just hours ago, the initial rage fades with surprising swiftness. He can blaze for what seems like days but only with a good lead up. Right now he’s just tired and sad— tired of this stupid room and sad that the outside was taken away from him so quickly. He wasn’t even ruining anything or hurting anyone! He just wanted to engulf _ a little bit _of the pretty, exciting world in fire just as beautiful. 

Lio considers the walls for a moment. They show signs of their use, of all the fires they’ve contained over the years. They’re blackened and in some places even crumbly, as if the heat has begun to wear away at even their capacity. In other places the ceramic droops and runs, melted down but still solid. 

Maybe....

He summons all the heat inside him, the hunger for the outside world, for kinship and a world of cheek kissing, hair ruffling, dancing fire. The rumbling world of others inside and below whispers encouragements as he presses his white hot hands to the door and concentrates. 

Lio Fotia has always been angry. Since the first hours of his life, he’s been sobbing himself hoarse. The fire has been there almost as long as the anger, intertwined with it, feeding off of it. Now he is more than angry— he’s zealous. 

He lets his desire and wildest dreams bubble up and lets the accompanying indignation come with them. He’s tired of his room, he’s tired of his routine, he’s tired of his flames being suppressed. 

The heat builds and builds, making his flesh bubble and blister then heal again (Lio has never gotten sick or had an injury that lasted more than a few moments). He manages to divert it around his clothes— he likes this shirt with its cute lion face— but barely. After a while he acclimates to the tricky business of maintaining decency and the tickly feeling of his body rebuilding. That means he can focus on the shifting brickwork beneath his hands. 

First there’s a loud cracking. Something seems to buckle somewhere, but the door Lio is pressing against remains firm. Next there is a slow dimpling as heat softened material begins to drip away from the center of the flame. 

Lio pushes further, burning hotter, letting the tight blue flames ripple out over every part of the room. After a while he hears another set of cracks. 

The hinges of the door, which he’d not previously given much thought, are now white hot and rippling. Lio pauses, thoughtful, and then gives the door a careful kick. 

It groans and moves a little. 

Smiling triumphantly, Lio kicks again, not caring that the plastic soles of his light up sneakers melt from the radiant heat. He ruins too much clothing to go caring about a single pair of shoes now. 

Heat and pressure, pressure and heat, he applies them both in full force until finally the door buckles and gives way, sending him tumbling out onto the paving stones beyond. A few feet ahead is the moonlit garden, empty of caregivers or supervision and only slightly scorched by his efforts. 

Kicking off his shoes, Lio runs happily into the open air. For several moments he contents himself singeing daffodils and turning mulch into white ash. Then, because he’s not a baby anymore, he stops to think. 

He’s alone and outside for the first time he can remember. He could, if he wanted, leave. 

Even if he lives in a shed, Lio’s not stupid. His grandfather brings a tablet over most mornings when he’s being good and reads him books. He watches TV shows made before the World Blaze and even the handful produced after, which are full of fire safety tips and dastardly Burnish villains. When he’s on his absolute best behavior, he even goes inside the house and sits in the big living room and plays while Yaya and Papa watch the news. 

The silly Burnish of the children’s shows, who are mostly fire and not very much people at all, are different from the Burnish he sees on real TV. The actual Burnish cover themselves in dark fire-made armor but underneath they’re just human. Lio has looked at the grainy footage of criminals under arrest and thought, _ they’re just like me _. 

A part of him, the reckless part, wants to run away and find those dangerous people, who roar through the streets and burn down whole cities. But Lio is a smart boy, everyone says so, even if he is… difficult to handle. He knows that running away probably wouldn’t find him the Good Burnish or the Bold Burnish. Running away would probably just get him caught by serious soldiers who would take him away from this family. And Lio is all they have left. 

Reluctantly, he turns away from the inviting wilderness and towards the flickering lights of the house. He leaves deep scorched footprints in the lawn as he marches up to the backdoor. When he reaches it he doesn’t bother to knock, he just screams. 

Febe, one of the steadier servants, recognizable without her veiling firegear, is the first to the door but not the last. Papa is soon after her, followed by Yaya and then a handful of other members of the household. They all stare at Lio, horrified. 

“I want to come inside,” Lio says, lip curling. “I wanna sleep inside now.”

Silent as the grave, Febe opens the door. 

The next morning there are exclamations of “tungsten!” and “_ melted through _ ” but for the night Lio is content to fall asleep in his grandfather’s arms.   
  
  
  
  


The swords on the wall_ fascinate _ Lio. 

He’s always loved the idea of chivalry and taking care of the weak. Nobility (which he’s been told he comes from, even if it is only on Yaya’s side of the family) is underwhelming but knighthood? Lio thinks he could get onboard with that. 

Because old fashioned stories about little princes and brave heroes written before the World Blaze rarely feature Burnish, his grandparents encourage the obsession. They get him tomes of fairytales and history, show him dozens of pictures of stiff faced ancestors in gleaming regimental gear, and generally try to impress upon him a sense of noblesse oblige. Playing dragon in the garden gets him locked up in freeze cuffs for a few hours but everything else gets enthusiastic responses from Yaya and Papa. 

There is nothing more satisfying than sitting next to Yaya with a heavy book, secure in the knowledge that he’s a trustworthy child who’s allowed near paper goods now. 

Well, maybe one thing would match that joy. He wants to touch the swords above the disused fireplace, which gleam like long mirrors and promise worlds of fun. They’re high enough up that he can’t jump and he’s _ not _ allowed to use fire in the house (he tries hard to obey the rules) so he has to resort to trickery instead. 

Papa has him up on his shoulders one day, showing him the family pictures that wind down the front stairs; wedding portraits of stuffy British aristocrats next to a breezy candid of Lio’s mother laughing by the shore of Lake Michigan, charred baby photos of Lio and an inexplicable oil portrait of an iguana. They cross the room to look at a photo of a man in tights and shoes with pom-poms on them and that brings them near the mantle where the swords are and Lio is so close. He reaches out…

And Papa jerks away so sharply Lio nearly falls off his thin back. “Lio, don’t touch those!”

“Why can’t I?” Lio asks. He’s never taken a simple denial well. 

His grandfather backs up a few steps, taking Lio even further out of reach of those gleaming weapons and their tasseled sheaths. “They are your Nana’s family heirlooms. They’re very precious and fragile, you might break them.” He doesn’t argue that Lio might injure himself. It takes a lot to injure Lio, as countless topples out of trees and flailing fits have demonstrated. Despite his tendency to put his hands on the stove top and kick walls when he’s mad, he’s never needed more than a bandage and a few hours of healing. 

Hurling himself bodily onto a couch, from five feet up in the air, Lio kicks his legs up into the air and folds into a sulk. “But I want to play with them; I promise I’ll be careful.”

Papa sighs. “Maybe when you’re older.”

If these swords are forbidden, Lio will just have to find swords that aren’t. He considers asking for Christmas but then he gets an even better idea. 

“Can I go outside?”

Looking relieved, Papa nods. “Be safe, stay in sight of the house!” he shouts as Lio races out of the parlour. 

Outside, Lio finds patch of flat stones in what has, over the years, become much more a rock garden than a plant garden (his suggestion of a _ flame _ garden was dismissed out of hand). Once he’s far enough away from any of the surviving topiary, he starts to summon the fires within. 

This can’t just be any fire, he reminds himself. This has to be a palpable fire, one of the heavy Burnish flares that can interact with the world in ways that transient flames cannot. He thinks of the dark smooth javelins of solid heat that sometimes spike out of his wilder fires, or the smooth pebbles of warmth he secrets in his shirt pockets some days. It’s like metal but not, like stone but better. 

That, but sword shaped, he thinks, pressing the image of a sword on the flames whirling around him. Long and thin and sharp, snazzy too with a neat handle and maybe tigers on it…

With his eyes closed it’s impossible to see the fire taking shape but he can feel it. First comes a flat bar shape, wobbly around the edges with pink flame, and then all at once it _ sharpens _. Lio has to move fast to catch the sword before it falls out of the air and then steady himself to keep from tipping over. It’s heavy. 

There isn’t much decoration, or much of anything other than a long blade and a handle, but that’s fine, it’s only his first attempt. He can try again later. 

In the meantime, he runs, sword point dragging close to the ground, back to the garden door and knocks frantically. Papa is in his study so he makes it to the door first and stares, aghast, at Lio. 

“Look,” Lio says proudly. “I did it!”

  
  
  
  


When Lio was 9 the Foresight Foundation came out with their patented anti-Burnish containment cuffs, with a built in flame detection system and autofreeze technology. Shortly thereafter, Yaya and Papa managed to get a pair of the “military only” cuffs and started using them on Lio. 

It’s miserable. Lio knows he can sometimes be difficult, knows better than anyone that sometimes he really wants to set things on fire, but he’s not a baby anymore. He has self control, somewhat. He doesn’t need to be trapped in bulky square blocks every time he slips up. 

There’s nothing to do when he’s cuffed. He can’t read, he can’t play, he can’t study. Sometimes Yaya will teach him languages or history, the sort of thing that can be learned with your hands pinned, but other times she’s too tired and Lio is stuck in the living room watching TV on the huge flatscreen, changing the channels with his chin. 

Frustrated, he tries to throw up a steel melting flame, only to be rewarded with a sudden burst of cold. Across the room, Papa looks up from his knitting.

“You’re going to hurt yourself Lio,” he warns. “Stop trying to outsmart a punishment. You set poor Brandt’s shirt on fire.”

Lio hisses and spreads out even more on the velvet couch, taking up space as a defense mechanism. It isn’t his fault that Brandt startled him, that he lashed out. He pulled the instinctive flame back in quickly. 

He tries to pry the cuffs off with his feet for a few minutes and then returns to staring blankly at the TV. It’s some news broadcast. They keep mentioning Kray Foresight, a man who Lio has never met but who he loathes the same way he loathes tomatoes and that stupid dinosaur. 

Anger boils up, like magma trying to reach the surface of the earth. Fire reflexively comes to his aid and—

The cold. Lio doesn’t normally get cold but the sudden, brief freeze of the cuffs is enough to affect even him. It makes his teeth ache and his skin crawl. 

Driven by spite first and rationality second, he tries again. He isn’t going to be beaten by some stupid metal cubes made by a big blonde dummy who _ never stops smiling _. When the second attempt yields similar results, he tries a third time, and a fourth, and a fifth, snarling with exertion and frustration and hatred. 

With the muffled TV in the and his grandfather’s absent humming and grandmother’s occasional interjections as she does the crossword in the background, Lio does battle with his restraints. 

Fire, freeze, fire, freeze. His teeth chatter and his fingers stiffen with cold. Ice crystals form on the elderly plush of the sofa cushions. The neon pulse of power beneath his rib cage flickers, threatening to give in under the oppressive cold, but Lio fans it with determination and forges on. 

A nascent spark, a blast of arctic air. A curl of smoke, a warning blizzard in response. And then, the pattern staggers. The cold Lio is braced for never comes and he explodes into action with an actual explosion. The cuffs crack open like great, cuboid eggs, and Lio is free. 

He can feel Yaya and Papa’s eyes on him, burning like lasers. Luckily, Lio is fireproof. He sprawls out over the couch, legs hooking over one arm, and fishes a book out from a seat cushion. 

Serves them right. Lio Fotia_ can’t _ be contained. 

  
  
  


Eventually they give in and get him his own tablet. 

It's been a long time coming, in Lio’s opinion. He’s rapidly running out of books in the study to read; and those are thick tomes about boring things like metal production and military history. Yaya hasn’t been much use as a teacher since he was ten— she’s very well educated about things like family history, economics, and minor details of European socialite scandal from the eighties, but fumbles a bit when it comes to social studies. Papa’s only areas of expertise are solar engineering and business— also family history and minor details of Greek-Michigander drama from the early eighties (between the two of them, Lio knows a lot about the marriages of dead strangers than he does algebra).

The only thing standing in the way has been their hesitance to let Lio hold anything of worth for long. He’s closely supervised whenever he uses electronics, out of fear of fire and more pressingly, some sort of toxic smoke from burning plastic. He can heal from a lot but who knows how much? (The older Burnish out there must know, Lio thinks). 

Eventually, as he grows up and his powers becomes even more finely controlled, those excuses become obsolete. The unending flame, like a cold bright hologram, comes easily to Lio now. He can choose what to burn and what to leave behind. 

So they give in and get him a tablet. It’s top of the line, because even though their house might be full of antiques and memories the Fotias are wealthy and aren’t afraid to show it once in a while. Lio spends hours in the first day browsing the internet, exploring the world outside his lonely home. Searching himself (No results, unsurprisingly. The Fotia’s grandchild is a ghost, barely existing on paper. Any records of his fiery first days were destroyed long ago.), looking up fun facts, playing stupid little games. 

On the second day he starts researching the Burnish. 

It’s always been something of an obsession. He’s loved newcasts featuring flame wielding criminals for as long as he can remember. The representations of his people seen on Promepolis TV weren’t the best but Lio would take any confirmation that there were other people like him out there. As a toddler he’d sit entranced by fuzzy images of rough looking people astride flame forged steeds. Yaya and Papa weren’t thrilled with his choice of entertainment, especially on the odd occasion when he tried to emulate the people he saw on the screen, but they tolerated it as long as it kept Lio calm and happy. 

The web offers much more than scattered breaking news. There are entire pages of videos dedicated to the Burnish gangs that plague the city, cataloguing incidents as far back as the emergence of the Burnish. The page managers seem to view educating the public on the Burnish threat as something of a common good. Lio, a Burnish threat par excellence, decides to use the resource to his own ends. 

He’s desperate to understand his kindred. The reason they burn things is obvious, the yearning to see the world combust is so innate to the Burnish it hardly bears mentioning. But why can’t they hide themselves and leash their powers like Lio does?

So he watches and he learns. 

The first thing he discovers is that every Burnish gang has their own quirks and style. It isn’t a surprise, he’s always known about Good Burnish (a prominent organization of his childhood, detained long ago) and their firey horses. There’s also Odd Burnish, who ride unicycles, and Sitcom Burnish in their tricked out cars. By far Lio’s favorite of the local cadres is Mad Burnish. They have motorcycles, which is beyond cool, but beyond that, they have _strategy_. 

The Burnish as a whole tend to burn judiciously. It’s so obvious looking at the collected footage that Lio’s surprised no one else has figured it out yet. For every city and building burned, they leave a way out. For every civilian there’s an escape route, for every flame a backup plan. If they wanted to turn people into blackened husks it would be too easy. But they focus instead on the scenery. Even there, they pick and choose. Most of the Burnish burn human construction over nature, and when they do give into their urge to ignite the plantlife it’s always a controlled burn in the wet season. Lio suspects they’re even guilty of stopping some fires. There haven’t been out of control wildfires since the World Blaze which seems pretty telling. 

Mad Burnish is the most cautious however. They strike quickly and cleanly, always evading the firefighters and the newly formed Freeze Force. They never kill anyone, though they come close. It almost seems to be a game for them, testing the will and capability of the Burning Rescue team. Watching aerial footage of their pyromanic sprees is like watching someone very clever win at checkers. You get all the pieces a row and then you hop, hop, hop—

They even come close to burning Foresight Pharmaceuticals once, which Lio respects deeply. 

They’re gentle too. Lio spots them grabbing a limp figure out of a fire before speeding off in several videos, sees no mention of a kidnapped civilian, and puts together the pieces. They’re rescuing Burnish before they can be caught. 

Mad Burnish has a leader, and a clever one. It’s evident in every one of their careful moves. Whoever they are, Lio can’t pick them out of the crowd of masked, armored bikers. The two biggest hitters in the field seem to defer to someone behind them but it’s impossible to tell who. Once he thinks he spots one particular biker gleaming with teal nod-- that’s the closest he comes to discerning the identity of his new hero. 

Aside from fascinating insights into the structure of local paragovernmental groups, Lio also learns more about his own powers. Most of the Burnish powers displayed in public aren’t nearly as powerful as his own. Even the most impressive of feats— the fireworks in the sky, the spikes of solid flame— seem easy enough to accomplish. A lot of fuss is made on the forums about a brief clip of a Burnish woman in Australia managing to hover for a few moments with her flames. Lio goes into the very back of the garden to try it and finds that after the first messy attempts it’s easy enough. He can only do it for a minute or two, but he thinks he could get better with practice and it’s still several times longer than the much vaunted Flying Burnish of New South Wales. 

Hopefully there are other Burnish out there stronger than he is. Hopefully they’re all just holding back. Lio would hate to be wasting his talent here, stuck in a dusty house with old people, when others are fighting. 

The more he learns about the nature of the Burnish, however, the more he doubts that. Child Burnish aren’t uncommon; only most are born to Burnish mothers and have a weaker, softer version of that flame (a fact often used to justify their arrest with their families). Spontaneous combustion in anyone younger than ten seems rare, based on the limited literature available online. With such a small sample, it’s hard to make any broad assumptions but the few cases that have been widely reported are dramatic and tragic. Well adjusted children do not attract the flames the same way perfectly normal, stressed adults can. The amount of emotional pressure needed to trigger the change goes up the smaller the human involved. There was one little girl in Rebuilt Ghana a year before Lio was born who levelled a school, a child three years ago who melted through three stories of a steel building (there are no mentions of what happened to them after the fires were put out). 

Two exceptionally strong fires, two children with every reason to be angry at the world, based on the articles. And that makes sense. Lio was an angry baby and now the anger is settled inside him, a permanent ire. It’s still not enough to go on. 

He asks his grandparents if there is any additional information on Burnish they can find him. He phrases it as a medical inquiry, concern about his own health. “I can’t find a lot of publicly available data on Burnish,” he says in his best grandson voice, “And I want to know how I’ll grow up. I know you have industrial connections.”

They both turn ashen but a few days later give Lio a micro-card full of files. There are advantages to being able to turn into a white hot inferno on a whim, especially now that they know he can burn through any restraints or fireproofing agents they try to use on him. 

The new information is dense and academic. It takes Lio a long time to sift through. Luckily he’s stubborn and willing to use a dictionary to look up new words. 

As he moves through the data rich, oddly cagey notes, he learns a lot about the Burnish. Their healing limits, their endurance, their tolerance for heat and cold. They age normally, the files note, need food, and can even suffer unhealable injuries. That makes sense to Lio, the Burnish are human after all. He gets hungry like everyone else. 

There are other, stranger details. Burnish crumble to ash when they die. Burnish reliably report hearing voices and having unusually vivid dreams. Burnish have shorter attention spans, stronger emotional extremes, and strange responses to what the writing calls “stress stimuli”. 

Then there’s the matter of hydrogen. 

It’s a choppy little letter in an innocuously named file. It’s very brief, a summary of a larger report. Still, this closing section catches Lio’s attention more than anything else. 

_ The Burnish are fusion generators, unharnessed and out of control. Many of their abilities which have most intrigued the scientific community— the ability to create matter out of air, control manipulate constructs, and ignite flames even when no fuel is available (see Prometh, Silex, & Faisca’s vacuum tests)— are ultimately derived from the fusion of large amounts of hydrogen gas. This bulk material does not come from earth’s atmosphere. Preliminary analysis of gas composition suggests that it originates from a mature star. The mechanism by which the Burnish acquire it is yet unclear, even to the Burnish themselves (as of latest intel and advanced interviews). However, a basic understanding of fusion enthalpy suggests that this pathway is open on both ends, as it’s likely that the majority of the energy B. subjects create is siphoned back to the source of their fuel. _

Then, the very last line. 

_ More research (and experimental subjects) needed. _

Somehow those words are what Lio needs to put all the pieces together. Experimental subjects. Tests of Burnish healing, an intimate knowledge of what happens when the Burnish die. Captives, detainees, cuffs that freeze. Neatly worded letters about cold tests with vacuums and gas probes and merciless intent. 

He throws the tablet down on his bed before it can melt in his hands and storms outside, singing the antique rug in his rage. When he’s a safe distance from the house he lets himself cry and with the tears come the endless flames. 

They’re killing his _ people _! How dare they, how could they! Lio has felt the cold of the cuffs and watched the fires burn and he knows which one is crueler. How do they live with themselves! He’s old enough to know better than them, old enough to have studied a scrap of history, old enough to know that there is no right way to lock a person up and use them as a lab rat. 

Lio screams at the sky and is surprised and gratified when flames shoot out twenty feet high. Good; he wants to be strong. He isn’t afraid to be a Burnish, even if, even _ if —_

Papa has come outside and is watching him, fearful and sad. Lio wheels on him and wails, “What did you save me from?”  
  
“Lio,” Papa tries to say soothingly, but Lio cuts him off. 

“What would they have done to me? What are they doing to everyone else like me?” Blue flames, the color of cornflowers and the sky before a tornado, spin around him in a wide circle. 

Papa steps forward, hesitates, and then carefully lifts one house-slipper clad foot over the ring of flames and places it down on ground claimed by the bright gas glow. 

It doesn’t burn him. Lio isn’t a hopeless, destructive child anymore, burning the things he loves because he doesn’t know any other way to set fires. Now the inferno answers to Lio. Even with this assurance, no one has ever come near him when he was having one of his flares— at least not without a thick layer of fire protective gear on. 

Now his grandfather is marching forward, a little unsteady (his knee has been bad since last year) but determined all the same. He comes right up to Lio, whose magnesium heat has lessened a little out of shock, and wraps his thin, sweater clad arms around him. 

“Oh, Lio,” he says. “We would have never let them hurt you. Don’t worry, you’re safe here. You’ll always be safe.”

Lio cries until his throat is raw, because love has always been a tenuous thing and to be offered safety unconditionally is new. Then he cries some more because they are_ hurting his people _ . 

He can’t bring himself to hate his grandparents, who love him and raised him. He **loathes** Kray Foresight. 

  



	2. Chapter 2

Upstairs in the attic are boxes and boxes of dead people’s belongings, records of a world before and during the Blaze. 

Papa and Yaya were both influential in their little community, the richest people in their church, the biggest sponsors of the local Greek community center. They ran their corner of the Detroit suburbs like a kingdom and were for a while beneficent rulers. Even Yaya, who’s _ British _ (the rich sort at that) and only converted to get married, will rail for hours about some little detail of a Epiphany celebration gone sour or a petty argument mediated between feuding homeowners. 

When the fires started their world was shattered. Lio doesn’t like to think too much about how much they lost in the years before he was born, but they speak sometimes about living in that firey place. Every day, a new tragedy. An explosion at the grocery store, a family home gone up in flames. People died, one after another, in stadiums and on the street, in conflagrations everywhere. 

Entire families were destroyed. People moved away, hid from society, fought back against what they perceived as a threat in the rising flames. And as homes were abandoned and entire lives put up for auction to cover estate debts, Yaya and Papa stepped in to preserve what they could. 

They’re always been historians— and keepers of personal, family histories especially. It makes sense that they wanted to keep some part of their missing neighbors and friends alive. They had the money, they had the space, why not store a dozen families worth of personal effects in their home? When they moved to Promepolis 3 months before Lio was born, chasing the safety some scientist promised, they brought their collection of grave goods with them. 

So the attic is full of scrapbooks and smart phones full of photos waiting to be discovered. There are heirlooms— fine china, model ships, icons of saints, and lacey wedding dresses— along with more mundane objects. At times it’s hard to tell what motivated a particular choice. Many of the items saved are old, WWI bomber jackets or patched together much loved toys. Others are from the years leading right up to the Blaze. Lio has found slap bracelets with movie characters next to cute posters of kittens next to folders of crumbling family records. 

Every artifact of the Fotia family’s Michigan community is packed in clear plastic tubs, labelled by owner’s name, as if waiting for the original keepers to come back and reclaim their missing pocket watches and pearls. It’s a fastidious system that does not lend itself to Lio’s purposes— namely, raiding these earthly remains for good clothing to wear. 

It’s not like the dead are _ using _ their stuff. He understands the need for respect, but he also knows that life goes on. It has been about a Lio number of years since fires raged across the world. Out of respect, he memorizes the name attached to every pair of boots or tie-neck top, says a quick prayer for the departed, and then makes off with his ill gotten gains. 

Yaya and Papa don’t comment. They’ve mostly given up on trying to get him to wear boring polo shirts or solemn slacks, and even let Lio pick his own clothes out online a few times a year The staid offerings of their preferred online store just aren’t as interesting to Lio as the vibrant clothing found upstairs. 

Maybe it’s the age of the attic clothes that makes them so interesting, or maybe it’s the lingering life once breathed into them. In an isolated mountain home, the clothes are a connection to a broader outside world. 

There are tiny stains on the sleeve of Lio’s new favorite ruffled shirt, signs that someone else once lived and worked in it. He finds decades old hard candy in the pocket of an appropriated white leather trench coat and resolves again to never let _ his _fires burn out of control. One unneeded death is one too many when there are already so many forgotten casualties. 

The attic holds other surprises as well. Lio is going through a box labelled_ Kokkinos _when he finds a picture of a familiar face tucked between two photo frames. 

His mother looks a lot like him. She has the same hair, pale like spring buds. Her face is a little longer, her eyes darker, but on the whole their faces aren’t dissimilar. She’s sitting in front of a campfire with a handful of other girls, all smiling dopily. She only looks a few years older than he does. 

He does some rapid math and determines that yes, this was taken before the first Burnish appeared. Before her boyfriend burst into flames and her life fell apart, before she left home and became her parents’ everlasting sorrow. 

She looks so happy, a rich girl in a nearly perfect world (all right, that’s an exaggeration but _ still _). Most of the pictures of her are like that, idealized and young. 

Lio wonders if she’s still alive, if maybe, just maybe, she survived having a Burnish child in a still rebuilding world. He hopes if she is, she’s happy. 

Who knows— statistically speaking, there’s a chance she could be Burnish too.

  
  
  
  
  


The woods surrounding his home are dark and deep and one day he feels a falling star settle there. There’s a sharp pain on the left side of his chest, a sense of sameness from the northeast as certain as a beacon, and he knows without a doubt that there’s a Burnish in his forest. 

He excuses himself from the breakfast table quickly and runs outside. 

All things considered, Lio doesn’t spend that much time in the woods. They’re… flammable in a way that he doesn’t entirely trust himself with, and they have far too many bugs. He prefers the garden which is neat and always predictable, or the study where he can read and work on his self-assigned homework, or the garage where Yaya and Papa keep their fancy cars that no one drives and that Lio regularly secretly takes apart and puts back together. 

Perhaps the most concerning thing about the woods, he realizes once he gets about ten minutes in, is how easy it would be to get lost in them. There’s no one around for miles. Once he loses sight of his house he’s almost entirely without reference point. He circles around a few times before he finds the Fotia Mansion again and set out again, this time marking his path with bits of thread from his lacey blouse (it used to be Yaya’s and suits him _ very _ well). 

The fall pine trees are shedding needles, coating the forest floor with a layer of prickly brown that Lio aches to set ablaze. The wind is high and cold, the air is dry, everything is just right for a raging, all consuming— no, he thinks. Not here. Not today. There are other things to burn. 

He troops onward, a sharp breeze whipping through his hair and pushing his bangs back from his face. He likes his haircut, he’s had it ever since he was eight and begged Febe with her sewing scissors to make him look like a prince. It has its downsides, however; without a hairband there no hope of keeping the long bob out of his eyes. 

Like a migratory bird sensing true north, he feels the presence of the other Burnish in front of him, drawing him inexorably closer. It pulls him up hills and down little ravines, across half frozen creeks, and finally to a rocky slope where the forest starts to give way to the great mountain range that border the city to the west. 

There’s a woman laying there, sprawled out like broken glassware. Her hair is stark white, white as bone, and darkened on one side by blood. Her breathing is audible from yards away and it sounds like the rasping gurgle of a sick tea kettle. A burning heart is beating, but it’s beating too slow. 

Lio freezes. 

It’s not that he’s never been around strangers before. Yaya and Papa invite dinner guests over every few months and he either watches from the top of the stairs or crankily makes the rounds, always introduced as “their nephew from overseas”. The parties are posh and insufferable, but they’ve done a decent job of socializing Lio into someone who can handle old ladies pinching his cheeks and asking him where he goes to school. Then there are the lawyers and accountants who come over twice a year to review the Fotia fortune (a thriving company long turned over to a board of directors, strong stocks, a decent nest egg, a burnt out mansion in the English countryside— Lio would be the heir to a great deal of money if he legally existed) and politely turn a blind eye to Lio’s presence. 

Since he’s grown older there have even been day outings, trips to the park or the grocery store. He met Brandt the butler’s daughter once and played tag with her. He’s sheltered but not maladjusted because of it. 

He has no idea how to approach one of his own though. He has no idea how to help a dying woman. 

The gurgling breathing stops and for a second he’s worried she’s dead— but no, the flame in her chest (not a metaphorical fire at all but a real one that Lio can see smoldering incandescent) isn’t yet gone. When it starts up again it’s with the rattle of words. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” the woman breathes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Cheeks burning with rage, Lio creeps closer. “I know. You’re too hurt.”

There’s a sort of snorfle that he thinks might be a laugh. “Sharp kid. Which gang are you with? They’re not with you, I can tell, but are they close?”

Processing that requires a little bit of brain power. “No, I’m not with anyone. Not any Burnish groups at least. I live here, with my family.”

“Alone then.” Her eyes, previously staring up at the flat blue sky, roll to look at him. “Oh, pobrecito.”

He knows rank condescension when its directed at him but he can be the bigger Burnish. There is a woman dying after all.

“Can I do anything?” he offers nervously, looking at her uneven breathing (obscured by a black leather jacket as menacing as it is cool) and her clotting blood. “I know CPR.”

“Now how’d a little thing like you learn that?” she asks, wry and patronizing. “I know you can’t be in school, not with a flame like yours.”

He balks. “I teach myself things! I know about history and science and how wrong we’re treated and I know how to take care of people! I want to take care of people when I’m old enough. I can help you!”

Her gaze softens a little. “Ah. I’m sure you do. There is a way but I won’t put the burden of failing on your shoulders. You want to take care of people but I must take care of you. Go home, Burnish boy. Be safe— you don’t need to see me die.”

Lio shakes his head. “I won’t leave you. You shouldn’t be alone. Burnish ought to stick together.”

There’s another harsh rattle before the woman regains her speech. “You speak a lot of sense for a chickie raised by outsiders.”

“I think about you all a lot,” Lio admits, folding his legs up and wrapping his arms around them. He’s just a handspan away from the splayed, shattered body. Close enough to touch her but far enough to be safe. “How good it would be to be around other people like me. When I felt you close by—”

“You felt my pain.” Her eyes drift close, white lashes pressed against wrinkled skin. “I am sorry for that. Our flames sense strong emotions from others— fear, hurt, anger. They drive us most of all.”

In spite of the awful circumstances Lio soaks in the words, clutching at the solitary specks of insider knowledge like they will save him. “I get so angry sometimes,” he confesses, “It feels like I’m out of control.”

“The anger is the hardest to manage. But love can drive you too, as can pride, and determination. We are not evil or empty flasks of negativity. We are just more intense than this earth is built to handle.” Once she gets started the words just spill out of her, smooth and rolling like a sermon. Her breathing steadies and for a second the fading light hidden between her ribs _ flares _. 

“Your family, do they treat you decent?” 

The question catches Lio off guard. 

“I guess. They know better than to try to suppress my fires any more. And they love me.” Love alone does not a good relationship make, Lio knows this. He still can’t help but feel beholden to the people who saved him and raised him, however haphazardly and with however tainted motives. 

“You should find your real family one day, when you’re big enough to run. Go to the desert and follow the smoke.” It’s phrased gently, yet the suggestion has a bite. She’s saying no one who isn’t Burnish could ever understand the flames, and Lio can’t say she’s wrong.

“I want to one day, when Yaya and Papa are… gone. I want to fight, I want to protect them! No one else will stand up for us.”

“That’s mighty bold. You’ll have to get a bit bigger for that— no one wants a child fighting— but I reckon my people will appreciate an extra hand. You’re strong.” She states it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world but Lio still beams, feeling like a child despite his 12 years. 

Then her eyes shoot open, pupils blown wide, and the weak coughing starts. It’s the sort of coughing you get when your lungs are full of water (or blood), more an impotent gurgle than a true expectoration. When that settles she whispers,

“Alright, not much time left. Sure you want to stay for this?”

Determined to see this through, he gives a curt nod. 

“Can’t say I don’t appreciate it. Now, you keep working. Remember, Burnish aren’t monsters no matter what they’ll tell you. We don’t kill without cause, we don’t burn what don’t need burning. We aren’t nothing but human, with some fire inside.” Her bluing lips curl. “Speaking of, I’m going to turn into ash after this.”

“I know.”

Her voice is just a thin whine over the bird song now. “Clever kid. Flame to ashes, ashes to the good earth.” Another coughing fit starts up, even weaker and yet more desperate, like she’s trying to breath bread dough. Thin, wrinkled hands grasp desperately at her jacket front, as if trying to rip apart her chest and pull out the offending obstruction. 

In an effort to give any comfort possible, Lio grabs one of the flailing hands and presses it between his palms. He feels her heartbeat underneath her tissue paper skin, senses the dying turquoise of her burning spirit. She relaxes a little at his touch, sighing softly, and then all the remaining air goes out of her at once. 

The heartbeat flickers, then stops. 

And there’s a moment when Lio feels something pulse desperately. It’s not the woman exactly— the shape she had has changed— but a part of her being. The _ firey _ part. He feels it searching, pleading, reaching out through her with white hot heat. Everywhere it looks it burns, and Lio feels the momentary flash and then slow crumbling as her hand falls to ashes in his. 

The seeking fire lingers for a second in the air, phantasmal and invisible but clearly evident to Lio’s perception, and then it’s _ gone _. It doesn’t leave it just disappears. 

Odd, he decides. Then again, what part of the Burnish existence isn’t strange?

It might be seconds before he moves from his seat among the rocks. It might be an hour. Eventually, a brisk breeze sends the sitting ashes dancing in the air and he moves, startled. 

He needs to get home. 

There was never a crisp image in his mind of how he wanted his first encounter with another Burnish to go. He had vague expectations, however. Fantasies. They’d be in trouble and he’d show up in… a cool car or maybe riding a horse. And he’d point a sword at Kray Foresight and say coldly “Let them go” and they’d all be very impressed. 

Death certainly wasn’t part of the picture. 

Flames to ashes, ashes to dust. 

Well, at least he knows what to do now. 

  
  
  


When Lio was very small there were half a dozen servants in the Fotia mansion, each with lot of training, a fire extinguisher, and an airtight NDA. 

Now that he’s older, they make do with three. 

Febe has been around the longest and has the most flexible role. She’s the gardener, the housekeeper, the handywoman, the person who tailors Lio’s dress shirts and cuts his hair with a ruler. Her personal life is, as far as Lio can tell, nonexistent. Her salary is _ exorbitant _. Only once in a while does she deign to have fun. In short, she’s boring. She and Papa spend Sunday brunch talking about stock markets. 

Brandt Chlebek is a trained nurse and usually deals with Lio. His official role is butler, his unofficial role is Lio Control. He’s no fun in an entirely different way (a fireproof straitjackets and flame suppressing gel sort of way). The fact that he occasionally show off pictures of his family earns him points in Lio’s book. He loses them for watching Lio with an unhealthy amount of fear most of the time. 

Nace is the youngest and almost by default, coolest of the remaining Fotia skeleton staff. A cook and general cleaner, they make Lio sweets once a week and don’t kick him out of the kitchen for being trouble, something that was a regular occurence when Febe was in charge of cooking. Most importantly, they don’t look at him like he’s going to snap and murder everyone if he gets especially heated. 

Cool as Nace compared to their coworkers, Lio doesn’t consider them to be especially interesting until the day they ride a motorcycle to work. 

It happens that Lio is in the garage, looking for another empty mason jar in which to do home chemistry (he likes the sort that blows up most of all, and as a scientist always records his experiments) when Nace rides in one morning on a gleaming blue bike. 

Cars are interesting, cars are fun, Yaya and Papa have 3 of them. Lio has been quietly taking the old Lincoln, which no one drives anymore since diesel engines are passé in a post-Blaze world, apart for years, tinkering with it and teaching himself the basics of engine composition. He’s not opposed to cars. There’s just an unimaginable_ romance _ to motorbikes. 

(Mad Burnish ride bikes. They’re not his absolute favorites anymore; their internal strategy and cohesion has taken a bit of a nose dive over recent years, making Lio question their leader’s competency. A bit of childish nostalgia still makes him predisposed towards them, however.)

And Nace’s bike is gorgeous. The pieces fit together oddly in places, as if salvaged and painstakingly restored, but every surface shines and every little joint is well attended to. 

Lio puts down his haul of chemistry supplies, and darts across the garage to Nace. 

“What’s that?” he demands, sliding between the cook and the door. “Did you build it yourself? It looks handbuilt.”

“Hey, little buddy,” Nace says agreeably, as if Lio isn’t less than a foot shorter than them and closing fast. “Yeah, yeah I did. Looks good, doesn’t it?”

“How did you do it? Is it all recovered parts from other vehicles or did you make some of them yourself? I’ve been wanting to do a similar project but we don’t have the proper engine components here and I got in trouble last time I-”

Nace raises their hands. “Woah, woah. I’ll give you the low down, okay, just let me go inside and start dinner first.”

Lio glares and to his credit Nace doesn’t flinch. 

“It’s a slow cooker meal, I’ll be done in a flash,” they promise, pushing past Lio through the door connecting the big garage to the always spotless coatroom. “Don’t touch my stuff until I’m back!”

Defeated, he flops down on the concrete and sets about examining the bike from every angle. It’s a motorbike. They’re cool— and they’re so much more complicated than he expected. It’s one thing to see things on screens and another entirely to look at them with your own eyes. 

He’s taking notes about the engine when Nace returns with a flour covered apron and a wide grin. Even though he hasn’t technically touched the bike Lio still jumps back. Sliding himself under the foot gears doesn’t technically violate the “no touching” order. It’s not best behavior either. 

“You’ve made yourself right at home,” they observe, crouched at the front wheel.

Lio spreads his fingers out on the cool concrete of the garage floor. “I’m interested. Can you blame me?”

“Nah, your folks keep you cooped up.” There’s a note of derision, as if Nace disagrees with the decision, and Lio yearns to know if they think he should be allowed the freedom that he seeks. Allies are few and far between— and not risking making waves for. It’s not like he plans to leave home any time soon. Not while Yaya and Papa are still alive. 

Nace pats the motorcycle affectionately. “So, what do you want to know?”

“Did you build it yourself?”

There’s a cobbled together look underneath the well polished shine of the machine. The cook beams. 

“Yeah! Took me more than a year to find all the parts and even longer to make them all go together the right way. It’s my first day driving her out and about!”

Every job with the Fotias pays very well so Nace shouldn’t be short on money. Lio almost asks; then bites his tongue. Some things might be private and, in spite of some lackluster socialization, he does have a rough grasp of conversational graces. Instead he picks a part of the bike at random and demands, “What does this do?”

Nace talks and talks. Some bits Lio already knows— it’s not too hard to build an engine if you have the time to learn (he’s never short on time). The rest flows easily from that initial knowledge. Suspension forks and drive sockets. It’s a teenagers dream and Nace is all too happy to delve into every detail. 

Lio itches to try to recreate some of the components, to copy the sleek mechanisms and oily surfaces. Despite seeing Mad Burnish summon and dismiss them for years, he’s never tried to make a vehicle before. It’s always seemed too big. Too likely to ruin what little remains of the garden and make Papa cry to boot. Knowing Nace has built a motorcycle makes him suspect that this too is something that can be accomplished at home. He’d start small, of course. A set of pipes, shock absorbers, the basic components of an engine. He can visualize them already and his fire _ burns _. 

There’s a hand on his shoulder, Nace’s hand. “Did you hear me?” they asks, a little concerned, body angled towards the fire extinguisher. Trust only goes so far in Lio’s world. “I asked if you wanted to go for a ride.”

All Lio’s resentment and dark thoughts dissipate like smoke. 

“Can I?”

Nace leans in. “Just down the driveway. Nothing too big. I don’t want to get in trouble with your old man.”

Even though Lio is largely immune to injury, Nace still makes him wear the motorcycle helmet. Grumbling he complies, because motorcycles are a rare opportunity. If he wants to make one of his own he needs to know how they function. 

“Are you sure you’re holding on?” Nace asks. 

“Yes! I’m fine. Show me how to start it.” Patience has never been a strong suit of Lio’s. He’s learned it the hard way but that doesn’t mean he enjoys one bit of it. 

“You’re the boss. So, once you have the ignition on and the choke pulled, you need to make sure all your switches are in the right place. On, Run, Neutral Gear, y’know?”

“Now what?” The motorcycle hasn’t moved an inch out of the open garage yet. 

“Now you press this clutch, left hand, all in and press start.” Like the sudden whumph of a gas fire, the engine coughs to life beneath them. It’s an old creature and Lio can _ feel _ the fires in its combustion heart. Raised on steady, more sensible electric engines he hasn’t realized that a machine can be so much like him. 

There’s was more fiddling about the still, growling bike. “Okay,” Nace says finally. “We’re ready to go. Hold on, bud!”

Lio opens his mouth to protest that he was holding on and had been for the last five minutes, only to have abrupt acceleration steal the words out of his mouth. 

They speed down the long, tree lined front driveway against the wind. It’s better than flying. Flying takes constant attention and exertion. This feels smooth and effortless. To either side of Lio there’s open air and the promise of danger yet Nace’s steady, warm back and the rapidly heating metal beneath them makes it all seem so grounded. 

When they reached the end of the little road, Nace turns the handlebars with the same even control they used to pipe icing onto birthday cakes, and the bike turns too, following his delicate motions to guide them back up the drive. 

The ride is over almost as soon as it’s begun, and Lio is left clamoring for more. 

“Not today,” Nace refuses, not unkindly. “I have work to do, and I don’t think I want any of my real bosses to catch me. Maybe over the weekend? You’re welcome to keep looking at the bike though— as long as you don’t break it or go on any joyrides I’ll get in trouble for.” They ruffle Lio’s hair as they leave, making Lio scowl. (He’s just beginning to realize that being five foot even means that people who haven’t known him for his entire life will baby him a little. He makes a mental note to grow taller.)

The motorcycle looms in front of him, beautiful and only temporarily dead. Its fires have been doused but they can return with just a few moments notice and a spark. 

Speaking of sparks… Lio turns his focus inward and summons up the fires inside. They curl around his hands, cool and green with pink edges, flickering sharply at angles no earthly fire could match. With just a little bit of focus he begins to shape it into solid carbon and silica, simple, easy to assemble pieces for a difficult project. Starting at the handlebars he works his way down the imagined shape of the bike, placing chunks and tubes and chains in the generally correct places. Moving pieces are always difficult and he spends long minutes agonizingly sculpting each one in place before snapping it into its own orbit. The wheels are tricky too, curved surfaces pose a challenge and they have to be balanced _ just _ right. 

It’s dark by the time he stands back, satisfied. There’s only one thing left to test. Lio presses the right buttons and pulls the right chains and isn’t too surprised when the bike stays silent. You don’t learn to replicate life in an afternoon. He lets it erupt back into its component elements and disappear with a hiss back into the place where his powers come from. He’ll practice. 

Febe is standing in the garage door, jaw agape and staring. She’s not one to be thrown for long, however. She clicks her teeth together and nods. 

“Come on. It’s dinner time and we’re all waiting for you.”

After dinner; he’ll practice after dinner. 

  
  
  
  


Training takes strange shapes. Lio doesn’t have any one to teach him or any structure to model his education on. Some days he isn’t sure what his goals even are. What is he supposed to be when he’s grown and how can he prepare for it with so little warning?

Without a tutor or a set curriculum he focuses on what feels important. Survival skills and history (Burnish and more general topics), local politics, medicine, the basics of engineering and the fundamentals of guerilla warfare. It’s easy to get distracted and spend a whole day playing stupid games or reading about some obscure topic, so he sets himself schedules and alots sections of his day for different tasks. The morning is for practicing fighting, the afternoon for books and sensible skills. 

The latter is easier than the former. He can find people to teach him how to sew, or distill water, or even the basics of first aid. The internet is full of tutorials and he has a house full of adults willing to occupy him if it means he isn’t in the garden lighting fires. 

Burnish specific skills take more innovation— fighting especially. There just isn’t a good way to learn self defense without a test subject to defend yourself against. Most of the helpful tips available are for humans who don’t have fire at their fingertips. In fact, many of the self-defense enthusiasts on the web take a distinctly anti-Burnish stance. (Lio still uses their advice and steals their workout tips. The fireman’s tools can be used to the arsonists advantage.)

So he practices hitting the same place on a tree over and over again with a long flame sword, until he has accuracy and speed if not functional fighting acumen. He teaches himself to shoot burning arrows with neat precision. He runs and jumps and stretches and slowly goes through the motions of different kicks and blows until they come naturally. 

The flames come more readily and more eagerly as he grows. He begins to make whole machines and slick suits of armor, never quite like the ones he sees on TV but close enough. He hikes through the woods to the mountains and finds crevices in the rock shielded from the sky where only lichen grow, and there he practices moderating the endless flames. 

It helps when he thinks of himself as a fusion reactor, slamming together hydrogen and then all the resulting elements until he gets the results he desires. Glassy spears, rough metallic surfaces, and flames of unthinkable heat. He can even feel his work disappearing— most of the heat siphoning off into nothingness, the fumes of his fires vanishing into thin air. The ‘where’ is still a mystery but Lio can pinpoint the flicker as they leave the world. Understanding that mysterious vacuum means being able to divert more heat, summon more raw material, control with perfect finity the direction and extent of his power. Cold patches, laserlike lines of blistering incandescence, fire that burns but doesn’t consume. 

Over time the rock of the overhang where he practices begins to slump and drip, melted soft as putty by repeated exposure to the same blinding flames.

When he notices the drooping stone, Lio picks up a small pebble, holds it in his cupped hands, and breathes the hottest fire he can summon between his curled palms. Within a few seconds, molton stone as runny as the inside of a lava cake is trying to drip between his fingers. 

He stops and lets the new obsidian cool and fracture and fall to the ground in slick black shards.

Sometimes he feels less like a bonfire and more like a small star— one small and weak enough to leave this fragile world intact, but more than strong enough to set it all ablaze. Lio Fotia is a person, yes, but he is something of an astronomical event too. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The world is so much bigger than his house and the woods. Once he’s old enough he sets out to explore it.

He starts out small. Promepolis is a new city, not even a decade older than Lio. Hidden in the nearby mountains are small farming towns that survived the great Blaze, places where there aren’t cameras or firemen at every corner. He takes his bike and drives down winding back roads, hits up little stores and rowdy pubs, and tries to learn how to talk to strangers. He flits around the city suburbs, always staying out of the path of attention, and makes friends in the empty parking lots of gas stations at 3am. 

His grandparents fret every time he leaves the house and even buy him a real motorcycle to tinker with in the garage in the vain hope of keeping him safe at home. It’s no use. Lio is sixteen and that’s more than old enough to have earned a little freedom. 

For the first few months he stays away from the desert where he can feel the flickering lights of hundreds of Burnish calling out to him. It’s not that he’s scared… he just wants to face his people prepared. It would be stupid to meet a real Burnish gang for the first time and freeze up just because he’s never had any real friends. 

Eventually he can’t put it off any more. The desert is beckoning, the Burnish are facing even harsher crackdowns than ever before, and Lio knows he needs to face the music and make contact with his kin. 

It’s a pretty summer night when he settles his helmet on his head and sets out for the desert, tracking the unmistakable light of Burnish souls against the dark sky. 

The nearest cluster is in a low burnt out building left over from the great fires long ago. There were towns here once, before the flames took them and the desert reclaimed them. Now there’s just brick husks and the remnants of weaker construction materials. 

He stops on a hill outside the building and stares inside. There are dancing lights visible through cracked glass windows, a hint of music on the air. It sounds joyfully alive. 

How do you approach people on the run? Surely going up to the front door won’t work. They’ll be on edge, untrusting. He’s not the same as them. He’s been hidden from this world for so long, he doesn’t know how to behave— 

A sharp blow catches him upside the head and the world goes blurry. When it resolves Lio is laying on the ground surrounded by tall figures dressed in rags and straps of leather. The one leaning over him has a blue mohawk like an Attic helmet and bright flames in both palms, reaching closer, closer…

Instinctively, Lio bares his own fire, letting it wrap around his whole body like a protective covering. The strangers step back. 

“He’s one of us,” the mohawked Burnish snaps. “Someone go get Frasier.”

The name, the costumes. He recognizes them. Sitcom Burnish, a gang notorious for their destruction. They largely range outside the city, tearing up the desert in their huge, retrofitted cars.

There’s a hand at his elbow, someone yanking him to his feet, no attention paid to the flames. Lio bristles but the woman with the mohawk— he can see her more clearly now— raises her hands in a universal signal of ‘settle down’. 

“We’re not going to hurt you yet, nipper. Wait until Frasier gets here before you blow up on us.”

Reluctantly, he cools his heels. He’s not keen on testing his combat abilities here, on half a dozen of his fellow Burnish. 

Within a few minutes the rag’n’bone clad messenger has returned, accompanied by a short, round framed individual in a weathered tweed coat and a long skirt. 

“Now, Monica, surely you don’t need me to deal with an intruder— though he is rather young, isn’t he?” There’s humor in that soft voice and also a British accent as fake as cheap deli cheese. Lio faked an accent— not as posh as this one, more rough around the edges— for an entire month after Yaya let slip that she thought his father was “a layabout rocker from London”. He knows the telltale signs of a slipping affectation. 

“Young and one of us, ma’am.”

“Hmmm.” The professorly woman turns on Lio. “You look far too oddly dressed to be a plant from Foresight.” Lio bristles at the implication— is his beige duster not professional? Does the waistcoat not convey sophisticated adulthood?— but he quiets when he notices the blood stain still drying on the breast of her shirt. 

“What’s that?”

“A clever spy too,” the one named Monica quips, evoking giggles.

“I’m not—!”

The tweed woman takes his arm, motioning gently for the rest of his captors to step back. “Yes, we know, my dear boy. You don’t seem the sort. I’m afraid you’ve caught us at entirely the wrong time however. We just raided a rather important auxiliary research lab for Foresight Industries up in the mountains. This is exactly the time they would strike.”

“Burnish wouldn’t betray their own,” Lio says, aware of how little he knows of what a Burnish would or wouldn’t do.

She gives him a sidelong look. “Why not? I’m afraid that there have been too many close calls. Now since you are Burnish I think some exceptions can be made but I’m afraid you are going to have to be closely watched for your first few weeks with us.”

“Wait, weeks?” Lio pulls his arm away and takes a step back. “I can’t be gone that long, my grandparents wouldn’t approve.” He’s still ringed in by taller people, stronger people, but his pulse beating hard in his ears tells him he could take them in a fight. He’s almost tempted to. 

“See? My dear boy, you have to admit that’s something a spy would say. We don’t get many visitors.”

He folds his arms across his chest. “Well, I came to visit. I wanted to talk to someone like me, someone who knew what it was like, but I can’t leave my whole life behind.”

The grease-streaked ghost of academia nods. “Well then, you’ll have to accept trial by fire. Hold him.”

Lio’s arms are gripped tight but there’s an air of hesitance to the little gathering. “Frasier, he’s just a kid.”

Frasier has a flame in hand now and is talking in a low, soothing voice. Lio kicks at his captors on principle yet finds himself unafraid. Fire can’t hurt him. Fire has always been his.

“Confident?” Frasier notes, drawing closer. “I’d think twice. Our powers are… reactive. They know our inner thoughts. They know when you lie. We are a part of each other and the fires will know if you try to trick us.”

“Good thing I don’t intend to,” Lio spits, aggressive on instinct. 

“Then you accept the challenge?”

The other Burnish, who know the flames intimately as well, seem worried and perhaps that should be a warning sign. But Lio has never backed down from the heat or from the siren call of his own wild pride. 

“Sure.”

“Very well. Relax and take deep breaths. Listen to my voice.”

It’s a soothing voice, fake accent or not. The words are dense and syrupy as molten rock, dripping with tectonic slowness. Lio barely notices when the blue-hot flame is pressed to his arm. Then he feels the tickling of plasma, like a friendly greeting from an old acquaintance he never knew he had. 

“Did you come here to hurt us?”

“No!” The fire seems to be warmer. Nowhere near painful, but noticeable in a way he’s not used to. 

“Do you work for Foresight?”

“I would never, that scumbag—” Lio’s rant is cut short. 

There are some laughs, harsh, croaking noises like the cries of desert birds. Frasier continues unabated. “Right. And, have you ever met another Burnish before?”

Here, Lio hesitates. It would be bad to tell them about the woman who died, surely they wouldn’t understand. As he agonizes, feeling awkwardly, horribly human, he becomes aware of the heat, curling up his arm, just the tiniest bit uncomfortable. 

“Once,” He grits his teeth. “But she didn’t stay long.”

The heat recedes and then the flame is removed. Lio slumps, more drained than he expected, against one of the ragged desert riders. 

“Well, that was reassuring.” Just as the whole gaggle seems to relax, another figure sprints out of the bright old warehouse and up into the twilight dim of the foothills to meet them. 

“Frasier, Frasier!” they cry. “You have to come back, he’s crashing again.”

“Drat,” Frasier runs a hand through her hair. “Not enough time, not enough time. Monica, take everyone back on guard duty. I’ll go back inside and tend to Sheldon and you, dear boy,” her mouth twists up a little. “I suppose you better come with me.”

Lio follows them in and feels the bobbing, wavering kindred spirits of other Burnish surround him. There is so much fire inside, three dozen points of light scattered across the building in little groups, laughing and singing loudly, showing off their powers with an open boldness that Lio has never dared dream of before. 

They are joyous— raucous even. The party has a mania to it that makes Lio turn up the collar of his coat and slink close to Frasier’s distinguished (if bedraggled) frame. 

There, in the center of the building where the walls are intact and there’s even an interior door still on its hinges, there is a fluttering flame that isn’t right. It’s too weak, sputtering in a horrifying, familiar way. This is the way a Burnish feels when they die. This is the room Frasier is heading right towards. 

“Drat, drat, drat,” she says as she stops outside the door. “We’re right down to the wire. There’s no help for it.”

Then Lio watches as she strides inside, and kneels at the head of a gray young man with a bald head and a missing leg. He’s gray in an all too literal sense too, a “you shouldn’t be alive” gray, skin ashy and threatening to become actual ash at any minute. 

Lio doesn’t want to watch him die but he also doesn’t want to look away. Around them the festivities rage, undeterred by the flickering light they can surely all _ feel _right there. There is a funerareal sense to the proceedings though. Eyes keep flicking to the solid concrete walls hiding away their dying comrade and every time they look away, Lio swears the cries become louder, the stolen drinks flow freer. 

He’s so entranced by the people outside the sickroom that he almost doesn’t notice when inside it Frasier places a licking handful of flame in her mouth, leans over, and suctions her mouth over the dying man’s. She exhales out, slow and steady, and Lio swears he can see her flame reach out and bolster the weak, dying light. 

For a moment it seems like it will be too much. The sudden flare in the thin ribcage of the patient is too abrupt, a dangerous flash like the glow of a smoldering ember when you blow on it (right before it goes out forever). 

Then, the fire stabilizes. It’s still fluttering with every heartbeat, still a low, pale flame, but it’s enough. Lio knows the difference between dying and merely sick when he sees it. 

Frasier sits up, wipes her mouth, and lets the other Burnish in the room crowd around, fussing over the invalid. She looks sickly herself now, as if pouring out that little bit of her inner flame cost something that cannot be easily replaced. 

Given the circumstances, Lio was pretty well resigned to not having any of his questions answered tonight. That’s fine. He’s learned more about his people in this hour than he could have ever hoped to know. He sits quietly against the wall and watches, happy to be surrounded by such warmth, by a crackling that seems familiar, like an ancient remembered affection. Combative and threatening as they are, he loves the Burnish here with all his heart.

He’s a little surprised when after a few minutes Frasier walks out of the room and slumps against the wall next to him. 

“Will he… will he be okay?” Lio asks. 

“With time and rest, he won’t be extinguished today. Long term… this incident may have taken a few years off of his lifespan. You know we don’t die like normal people? We—”

“I know,” Lio says. “Endure until the flames go out and then crumple into ashes.”

Frasier shrugs. “You never know. A lot of the kids who come to us, they don’t know anything. They’ve just awoken their powers, they’re scared, they’re unsure, they can’t tell the myths from the facts. We’ve had more than one acolyte decide not to shower in case they’d put themselves out. You seem more experienced.”

“I’ve been living with them for a very long time.” Lio cocks his head as the tempo of the party music, a scratchy affair played on an old 2000s stereo, slows in tempo. He’s pointedly not looking back in that room. “Does that always work? Giving them some of your flame?”

“Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.” Frasier exhales. “It’s a hard call to make. I’m not happy we had to make it today.”

Lio rearranges his feet on the sandy floor. “Why did you have to make it today? You made a move didn’t you, against Foresight? Did they hurt him?”

“You’re perniciously nosy for a civilian,” the woman notes with amusement. 

“I need to _ know. _Everything.”

“Yes, we, as they say,_ hit _ Foresight Labs. A small base at the foot of the mountain. Research only. We were hoping to rescue, well, it’s no matter, but we didn’t find them. We found a lot of very nasty equipment however and some scientists who would happily watch us drown and take notes. 2 deaths on our side, and we nearly lost Sheldon in there.” She’s watching Lio like she thinks he might start and run. 

He closes his eyes instead. If he’d come to visit yesterday or last week, would he have met them sooner? Could he have offered help with this doomed raid? Could he have saved lives?

“We killed all their investigators and prodders of course.” Lio must flinch at that because she says, “We don’t usually go that far— Burnish don’t kill anyone who doesn’t deserve it a little— but they’d called that fate down. You don’t want to know what they were doing.”

_ Burnish shouldn’t unless it's necessary _, Lio thinks, and doesn’t say it. He didn’t lose two friends to the ice and the sharp tools and whatever other horrors are hidden away from prying eyes. He isn't one to judge what's necessary or not, even if he feels instinctively that it wasn't this.

It doesn’t feel right to him to… to… delight in it like this. They are what the flames made them but surely they can be human too. The dizzying canned laughter and fast-paced, pressing heat of Sitcom Burnish frighten him. They’re all show. 

He opens his eyes and looks out on the flashing lights and periodic flames of the dance floor, the skinny figures there dancing like there’s no tomorrow. “Are all Burnish like this?” he asks. 

“No. We had dignity once. We had organization. Thirty years ago it was said to have been so wonderful. The flames burned night and day.” Frasier doesn’t seem to have recognized his question. He doesn’t begrudge her the foray into nostalgia. “When old Madzie died a few years back we lost the last person in a hundred miles who could remember those days. Who walked through the endless pyres and spoke with the great leaders. Now it’s just us and a few other groups, trying to survive.”

“Do you know the others?” Lio tosses a flame between his hands as he speaks, growing antsy here in this circus of desperate bravery. “Do you talk to each other?”

“Rarely,” Frasier says grudgingly. “They’re weak. Husband Burnish does some good work but they’re few in number and unpredictable. Mad Burnish is diminished of late, they spend most of their time helping civilians and only occasionally manage a good burning.”

“Mad Burnish lights big fires, close to the city center,” Lio observes.

“Only every few months. They’ve got too much else on their plate. They’ve forgotten what it means to be Burnish. They’ve lost sight of our primal desires. Fire should come before all else. Who would you be without the flames?”

_ Stupid _ , Lio thinks angrily, _ I’d be Lio Fotia _. His power is a part of him, he’s not a part of the power. 

He stands up. “I need to go home.”

Frasier looks at him. “Are you sure you won’t stay? You have a bright spark. You’d be an asset, and you wouldn’t have to live alone among those people.”

It’s tempting the idea of staying here, riding cars about the desert blanketed with endless sunlight, fighting the people he’s always wanted to strike back against. Lio still waves her off. “No. I have to go home. They need me. But… can I come back?”

Her head drops. “By Jove, child, you sound more like an infiltrator every moment. I suppose, against my better judgement, yes.”

Lio walks himself out. 

The night sky is perfect as he rides home, pure and dark and studded with pristine stars and a wavering Milky Way. The picture of the universe above is only a little spoiled by the far off city lights. Lio sneers. He doesn’t hate humans, he still believes he is one, but he can’t deny that they do make a mess of things. 

  
  
  
  


He visits with Sitcom Burnish again and again. He and Frasier talk over lukewarm tea, carefully brewed from old bags in chipped mugs. She’s oblique at times and always cajoling, trying to convince him to join her team. Nevertheless, Lio learns many things. 

She has stories, passed down from those who came before her, of the first Burnish and their city leveling fires. Lio likes those most of all. 

A few of the other Burnish take him out driving one day, on one of their clunky cars half built of true metal and half a slick, dark Burnish creation. It’s a bumpy dangerous ride over packed earth and sand. It’s almost as exhilarating as riding a motorcycle, and Lio almost considers switching interests. The brief thought is discarded for a number of reasons, including the fact that Yaya and Papa got him motorcycle riding leather for his 18th birthday. They’re a little tighter now that he’s hit his last growth spurt but still perfectly made. Lio wouldn’t give them up for the world. 

The visits are just frequent enough to make Lio comfortable with other Burnish, but not often enough to leave him too near to his people. His grandparents’ combined worry when he’s out of the house limits his potential interactions. 

In addition to his rare rides out to the desert to see the wild Sitcom Burnish, Lio also manages to catch the elusive Husband Burnish gang on two occasions. They’re odd, possibly even odder than his usual points of contact, but understandably so. Isolation and paranoia must take a toll on the mind. The only active Burnish group he doesn’t see is Mad Burnish, ostensibly the largest of the three. He thinks they’re on the other side of the city from him, hiding in plain sight right under Foresight’s nose. 

The pressure on Burnish is picking up, not just in Promepolis but worldwide. More and more lone arsonists disappear, are either reported arrested or simply drop off the grid. Smaller groups are taken. Fires are put out. Above it all looms Foresight. 

Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised when he sees Sitcom Burnish on TV one morning, being cuffed and put in vans. It still makes his mouth fill with the taste of ashes and his mind gives way first to panic and then to sadness. 

There’s not much Lio alone can do, of course. Besides, Yaya and Papa need him (he knows now that as soon as they are buried he’ll be gone, off to do what he’s always planned). 

He takes more rides alone in the desert after that. 

  
  
  
  
  


He overhears the conversation almost by chance. He’s not given to eavesdropping, he has more important things to do with his time, but as he passes his Grandfather’s study with a sword in hand he overhears his name and stops. 

It’s not just the word Lio that freezes him in his tracks. Grownups (bigger grownups, he’s more than grown now too) talk about him behind his back all the time. It’s mostly the sentence surrounding it. 

“Are you sure we can find Lio a spot?” his grandfather says. 

Helplessly, Lio moves towards the door. 

“Certain. His… status might prove difficult but he’s in the right age range and he’s in good health. And we can pull the strings. It’s his reaction I’m worried about.” That low, gentle voice is unmistakably his grandmother. 

“He’ll be fine,” Papa tells her. “He’s starting to pull away from us these days. He’ll manage without us.”

Lio’s heart stops.

“Will he?” Yaya frets, “He’s so independent these days but he’s still such a volatile boy, so fragile.”

“It’s the only way—”

Lio doesn’t bother to hear the rest of the conversation, just turns and walks back up the stairs on bare feet. How dare they? How dare they try to abandon him! He stayed for them!

All those years, all those missed chances, the world given up for the people who had raised him, for the only family he’d ever known, and now they wanted to send him away? Lio didn’t want to contemplate where, didn’t want to imagine why. Were they scared of him again? Had they finally given up on raising their daughter’s unloveable Burnish son?

No, he knew them, and they’d sounded so… kind about it. They probably just had some grand plan, which, as usual, didn’t require Lio’s assent or participation. 

Well, he's twenty-one now. The days of being wrestled into little rooms and trapped away from the world were well behind him. 

He’d stayed for them, but if they weren’t going to keep him around he would leave. Furthermore, he decides, thinking with the heat in his chest and little more, he’ll leave tonight. 

There isn't much to pack. His tablet, a spare pair of clothes, some food, a water bottle. After some thought he steals some money as well. The Burnish might need supplies and it's easier to carry cash than several duffel bags of canned goods. 

He lingers for a moment over some of his nicer outfits before changing into a plain white shirt and a cravat he’d sewn out of old napkins. He layers his leathers over that, puts on sturdy boots, and nods. 

There's nothing else. He was never much one for material things. 

The powerful urge to say goodbye is overruled by the anger burning in his torso._ They were going to get rid of him. _

He needs to leave. 

The front yard is tranquil and green in the moments before Lio starts his motorcycle. The roar of the engine disturbs the clear night air and there are cries of alarm from inside the house. That makes him satisfied, in a vicious little way. Still, he can feel the bubbling, boiling anger coming over him again as he kicks off. 

The deep marks left on the lawn look like tire tracks, and they burn for a long time after Lio careens away. 

  
  
  


He likes Mad Burnish. 

There's Meis who used to be in an emo band in a garage, and Gueira who watches the weirdest sports obsessively whenever they have a signal (rugby seems fake and if he hadn't been raised on British etiquette guides Lio would believe cricket was as well). They both claim to be Australian and Lio is fairly certain one of them has to be lying. The rest of Mad Burnish is similarly quirky. They're enjoyable to work with though. Unlike Sitcom Burnish there's an easiness to their demeanors and their laughter is strained but not yet broken. 

Together, they're determined to rescue whoever they is still alive from the monsters of Freeze Force. Lio almost has a plan. 

It's possibly a little harder being in charge of a small, anti-governmental organization than Lio had anticipated. He's been training to help the Burnish his whole life, he just never expected to be handed this much responsibility so quickly. It's not that he doesn't appreciate the trust that Mad Burnish is putting in him, the weight of their hopes is just heavy. His show of power seemed to impress everyone, seemed to convince them that he was a prodigy destined for success. Whenever he's around their eyes brighten and they speak optimistically of the friends they want to see again, the people they can't wait to free from a cold prison. 

For that reason, Lio tries to spend some time alone in-between strategy sessions. 

He's watching the sunset and considering how all the ways to save as many people as possible when Guiera and Meis sneak up on him. 

"You're hiding out here?" Somehow Meis doesn't phrase it as much of a question. 

"I'm thinking." Lio rubs his forehead. "I'm not sure if everyone will make it out. My plan is good but Foresight, Foresight might have tricks up his sleeve."

Gueira chews thoughtfully on something unseen. "We would have been goners if not for you, so anything better than death is a win."

Lio shudders. "I don't know about that. I think that death might be preferable to being caught by them." He can feel the two pairs of burning eyes on him, full of unasked questions. He doesn't want to say how he knows what Foresight Labs is doing to Burnish. It's only a suspicion to begin with. An educated guess based on lots and lots of well logged evidence. Their stares continue, and he's forced to explain.

"Death for us is quick. There's the glow and the fading and then we're ash. It's still warm. The fire never even leaves you, its your body that gives out. What they do is cold. It would dampen you, try to block out every bit of your power," he shivers remembering the feeling of ice against his delicate baby skin, "try to freeze you into compliance. I'd rather have the ashes."

Meis gives him a long look, then his eyes flicker away and he shrugs. "Fair enough. At least death leaves ashes, not a body for them to cut open and play with."

They do know then— or, like Lio, they suspect. 

"Flame to ashes, ashes to dust," he says weakly.

Suddenly they both grin, and Gueira whistles. "Oh, boy that takes me back."

Now Lio stares in askance. 

"Old Mads, who started the gang and ran it until... a while ago? she used to say something just like that." Meis explains face returning to passivity. "You sounded just like her."

"Like she's come back to haunt us," Gueira sighed. "Boss, I have a good feeling about this. You're Burnish to core."

Lio doesn't doubt it. His core is an ocean of fire, deep and wide as the sun. 

They'll succeed, he resolves. They haven't any other choice, and besides, the flames didn't pick them for meekness. Their resolve shines, like... like something burnished smooth and bright. 


End file.
